SIGHTINGS delta doo dah
watch out for the wylde one!
continued on outside column of next sightings page 0AGE s Latitude
38 s *ULY
ALINE ADISAKA
Not long after she signed with Starboard as a pro athlete in Stand Up Paddle Boarding, Fiona Wylde was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She was 18. "Here was my chance to be a professional athlete, and I was so excited. I did one race and was in second the entire race, but it was superlong and in the last mile I just tanked. It was a big shift for me." Wylde had just signed her dream, but she wasn't sure how it was possible to be a professional athlete with a body that wasn't working for her. Nonetheless, she started on insulin and three days later flew to Europe to race for the first time in the European Championship tour in England. She won the race. After many years as a SUP athlete in both paddle racing and paddle surfing, Wylde, 24, is switching her attention to the iQFoil (Innovation Quality), a new Olympic class for 2024, with an eye to the Paris Games. She's got a ton of experience behind her, and a healthy appetite for competition. At 5'2", she's one of the tiniest people I've ever seen on a windsurfer, let alone on a windsurfing foil board. Her Olympic dream is inspired and supported by her family. Her greatuncle, Cecil Irton Wylde, represented England in the 1928 Winter Olympics in ice hockey, and her uncle, Peter Wylde, a professional equestrian showjumper, won gold in Athens in 2004. Wylde was there to experience his success. "I guess that's where the Olympic effort started!" she laughed. Born in Port Townsend, Washington, her first introduction to the water was on her parents' sailboat, Bryony, a 36-ft gaff cutter on which Ellen and McCrae Wylde ran sail charters. (Fiona's mum has always had a business making dodgers for sailboats.) While Fiona was not much more than a toddler, the Wyldes began to spend time in Los Barriles, Mexico, on the east cape of the Baja Peninsula. Fiona's routine became Port Townsend in the summers and Baja in the winters. She'd play on the beach while her parents sailed and windsurfed, and occasionally McCrae would sail her around on the nose of his board until she was old enough to be on her own gear. "Windsurfing was our family sport — it's what we did together and how it all started for me," Wylde shared, with her characteristic enthusiasm. The family moved to Hood River, Oregon, and by the time she was 10, she was already an accomplished windsurfer competing alongside her dad. Through to middle school, Wylde would attend school until mid-November when her parents would take her out, telling school, "She'll be back first week of March, what does she need to know?" She spent 12 years attending Mexican school, making lifelong friends with local kids and becoming fluent in Spanish. Wylde became a water hound, competing in windsurfing slalom, wavesailing, SUP surfing and SUP racing. It was a unique lifestyle for a teen, one that she successfully pulled off from age 16 to 20, spending a lot of time in Hawaii and learning as much as she could about waves and surfing. She attended an online high school program, which allowed her to travel and compete. Competing was the direction it was all going for Wylde. She won the Youth World Title in 2014 for wavesailing and took second in the World Cup in Hawaii in 2014 and 2015, events liberally peppered with top pros. She also competed in SUP racing, making podium at international events, and winning the SUP The Mag Breakthrough Performer Award presented at the annual SUP Awards. The hard work paid off. When she was 17, she signed with Starboard for the 2015 season and since then has been on the Starboard International Dream Team for SUP. She competed for another year on the windsurfing tour after joining Starboard, but it was complicated to compete in all four disciplines at the pro level within a calendar year. She focused on SUP surfing and SUP racing.
The headline of this story refers to the Delta Doo Dah's list of entries — not its age! As of June 27, 96 boats had signed up for the 13th annual cruising rally to where it's warm — inland. And yes, we do mean "annual" literally — Delta Doo Dah was one event that people could do even during the COVID pandemic. Among official events on the Delta Doo Dah itinerary, the Delta Ditch Run on June 12 took sailors all the way from Richmond Yacht Club to Stockton Sailing Club in one day. Congratulations to Doo Dah'ers Dean Hupp and Bob Farrell on the Islander 28 Jackie Oh for taking second place in the Cruising Division. Read much more about the Ditch Run in Racing Sheet on pages 8081 of this issue. Delta Doo Dah sailors also partook of Summer Sailstice on June 19.
